THE ATTRACTION enp GOSSIP. T HE true puzzle for observers . in
all cases like that of "Langtry v. Rosenberg" is why Englishmen are so attracted by gossip about known names, that it pays to run the very serious risks involved in the law of libel. That semi- indecency should sell, is intelligible. There is, undoubtedly, a stage in civilisation in which indecency is attractive, or rather, is mixed up inextricably with the sense of humour; and from Aristophanes to Rabelais, and Defoe to Burns, every one who has striven to attract the mass baS been tempted more or less to pander to it. Half of the English are not civilised beyond that point, while the prudery of the people at large gives a
i special zest to every defiance of t. Many years ago, the pub-
lishers of a popular almanack made a determined attempt, sub- sequently successful, we believe, to omit some notices which had been printed on their alinanack from time immemorial, and were originally, no doubt, intended as medical advice. They were, however, gross, and the publishers very properly sup- pressed them, to find their almauack returned by thousands of reams :upon their hands: The country-folk would not buy it Bowdlerised. That evil is admitted, and is one to be steadily but wisely repressed by law, till the people have, under the operation of the law, become civilised on the subject ; but what is the meaning of this other mischief Why do people crowd in thousands to buy papers which give, and profess to give, nothing but gossipy details, weeny, though not invariably, ill-natured, sometimes true, but more often false, about the lives of their superiors ? What is it that provokes their curiosity to such a keen point about people they do not know and seldom see, and do not derive from, at least consciously, any benefit or any harm? What induces them to spend their scarce pen- nies in order to be told, usually in the most slipshod English and without the slightest attempt at wit, that Captain the Honourable Vere de Vere has been cheating again at cards, and that his sister has been paid by her milliner to sell a new hat by being photographed in it. They are not going to play 4cart6, or to cheat anybody at " all-fours," and they will neither buy the hat, nor recognise that non-existent article when they see it. They are, indeed, dimly conscious that the chances are five to one there was no cheating, and fifty to one there was no hat; but still they run and buy. We firmly believe that if any cunning publisher were to fill a, paper day by day with unscrupulous libels upon non-existent people, he would have a splendid sale for six weeks, and when he had been found out, would still pay all his expenses. What do the people,
thousands of decent folk included, waste their money in that way for ? It cannot be from hate, though that would be the explana- tion offered by clever Continental policemen, for the whole his- tory of English society contradicts the theory. Individuals among the upper class suffer from libels, but the whole body retains its position from ago to age almost unaffected, or affected only by the growth from other causes of independence or in- difference. The progress of equality may be as certain as the i cooling of the planet, but t is very nearly as slow. The libels on George IV., which passed all bounds, and would be incredible to any one who had not seen the libels of our own time on the Napoleonidee did not injure the Monarchy one whit, and were visibly and directly checked by the publication of the "Court Circular," which told everybody where the Royal family had lival and dined and walked for the particular day. It can hardly be admiration, or the tendency would be towards admiring little stories—as it is about some popular athletes and sportsmen—telling how Mr. de Vere had jumped his horse over a ten-foot wall to recover a child's hat, and how Miss Million had given her slipperful of gold pieces to a destitute widow—a story actually told of Queen Isabella of Spain, to the direct increase of her influence in Madrid. English stories sell best when they are spiced with ill-nature. The attraction must be merely curiosity, and the cause of that curiosity, which is almost peculiar to this country, and is certainly not exhibited in any other to the same extent, is most difficult to discover. The people arc as anxious to know all about their superiors, and especially their well- known superiors,—how they live, how they dress, how they pass their lives, how they amuse themselves, as if they belonged to a separate order of beings, as if they were angels, or at least Genii or Afreets, or men and women from another planet. They will stare at their photographs by the hour together, and discuss their looks with the funniest eagerness of criticism, tending, if the subjects are women, to an admiration very often totally undeserved. D mill, at least, of the " professional beauties" " come out" in their photographs distinctly plain women, plainer than a large per-centage of the people wondering at them, but that fact makes no difference whatever. There they are, and if they were owitt's Azims, people of the race born of the Sons of Heaven and Daughters of Earth, they could not be watched more eagerly.
It is usual to say it is all fluukeyism, but there are two facts in the way of that easy explanation. The English people, who seem so silly in this respect, do not really defer to the people they watch so curiously, do not take their tone from them, do not hesitate, if annoyed by them, to hiss them hard. They are quite as impatient of opposition from the known, as from the unknown, and, moreover, are to all appearance nearly as delighted to read about people of whose rank they are un- certain, as about those whom they know or think to be far above themselves. For—and that is, perhaps, the oddest fact in the whole business—they never question that they are above them- selves, never show a trace of the idea that all men are alike, never doubt for an instant that somehow, in wasting so much energy and money on studying others, they are all the while looking up. They would not spend farthings to hear about their own class, or spend five moments in studying the finest face in an ordinary dress and a cheap bonnet, and known to be unknown. What can be the cause of such a fancy, so general, and to judge from the history of many years, with such deep and widely-spread roots We cannot, we feel, answer the question thoroughly. The habit, though constantly said to be one in accordance with the national character, is really an excrescence upon it, for the true Englishman, besides having a tendency rather to insolence than servility, is an incurious animal, not given to think anything out of his own line inuch worth attention at all. He seeks in an international exhibition the rooms lie understands. We can only suppose that in his permanent struggle upwards, in hope and never ambition, he does which he rarely loses acquire an interest in the ways and belongings, and even the personal appearance, of all above him, which in one direction—clothes—tempts him to imitate them, and in another—habits—provokes him to perpetual inquisitiveness, which is pleasantly gratified when he thinks he has settled that, Money apart, an classes and all people are very much alike. The refinement, he opines, is only skin-deep, and con- sequently, if he could only get the money, he would be refined too. The struggle upward is, in his own mind, easier than he thought. That is certainly one reason, though not the great one, for the tolerance of extravagance which the lower English occa- sionally exhibit. They could scatter with any one, and that bit of theoretical equality is pleasant,—as pleasant as any display of fastidiousness, or exclusiveness, or ceremonious courtesy is annOying. It is the more pleasant, because of a peculiarity in Englishmen which must be, after all, the main explanation of the interest in this kind, of gossip,—their tendency to exaggerate the difference in character produced by merely outward circum- stances. They all show this, from the politician who, as Mr. Gladstone saii, believes in one-legged races, to the shop-girl who thinks that a "real lady in sealskin" must feel somehow dinrently from herself ; and the tobacconist who declares that Peers must be good," because, you see, they are a different Order from us." The rich constantly make the blunder about the working poor, whom they credit with l manner of separate ideas which have no existence, and whom they "study," when they are philanthropic, as if they were unknown tribes; and the poor do it, too, with a sense of difference sharpened by inner discontent. Of course, if there were a difference, curiosity would be only natural, and the fallacy that there is, is ex- aggerated by the English habit of seclusion and separateness between classes, till any statement about one class read by the other is as interesting as the newest book of travels is to the culti- vated traveller. We wonder if any gossippy journal ever reached anything like the circulation of the Chronicle while it was publishing Mayhew's letters on "London Labour and the London Poor," letters now almost forgotten, but which created at the time extreme sensation, though their principal interest lay in descriptions of ordinary Londoners, drawn exactly as if they had been Bedouins or Zulus, or the white people north of the Zambesi.
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